For some time Captain Coffin was excited and rest­less; even more rest­less than usual, and he was always a rest­less and active man. Although he would some­times sit still for long periods, he left you with the impression of activity, of tension, as though he was prepared instantly for anything. At such times his eyes were very bright, and from time to time his head turned alertly. I had no doubt that he was hatching pos­si­ble plans for the recap­ture of the Battles, or, at any rate, that his brain was seeth­ing with ideas, probably chaotic, which he was trying to reduce to something like order. We were in the seas for which he was certain that she was bound, the one refuge of every mutinous or piratical crew.

All of us had been thinking more or less of the Battles. My own thoughts, I remember, were about equally divided between her and can­ni­ba­lism. Cannibalism always has a peculiar fascination for the minds of young and old, although we older people pretend that it is the scientific side, the history of the race, and the origin of the practice that fascinates us. For a boy it is the grue­some­ness that fascinates, and I made no pretense about it. We had passed the Solomons, about which I had heard various horrible tales, and were passing the Fijis. We did not even see the Fijis, although I stood at the rail for about two hours, straining my eyes to the eastward for a possible sight of them, while the brisk trade wind blew in my face. I got something out of it: dreams of coral islands, and of breadfruit and coconuts, and the soothing of that great, steady wind upon my spirit. I do not know what Captain Coffin got out of it. I saw him standing at the main rigging, doing the same thing.

When we got to the New Zealand grounds we began at once the regular routine of cruising, but saw no whales for three days. We did see two whalers, one of them from home, having sailed a week or two after we did, and come around the Horn. This was the Henry, Captain Jefferson. We lay to for the whole of that day, while we had a good gam, Captain Nelson going aboard her for the forenoon, and their first mate coming aboard of us. In the afternoon the two captains adjourned to the Clearchus, and the Henry’s mate went back, followed by Mr. Baker in his boat. The Henry had no mail for us—none for me, at least—and I did not send any of my journal by her, only a brief letter to my mother, for the chances were that we should get home as soon as she. Each captain had whaling news of value to the other, and possibly the rum on the Clearchus was different from the Henry’s, and they wanted to compare them. Captain Jefferson put off about sunset, and Mr. Baker came back. Much to the dis­ap­point­ment of Captain Nelson, Captain Jefferson knew nothing about any new cruising ground, the place where the Apollo had filled up.

A couple of days later we raised the spouts of a small pod of fairly large whales, and got one of fifty barrels, which Mr. Macy killed. The other boats chased for three hours in a heavy combing sea, but the whales got away. After that we had the usual luck, nothing extraordinary. We chased a good many times with no result, and got three whales which gave up their lives quietly. The whales on the New Zealand grounds were rather big fellows, for the most part, sixty barrels and upward; and some have been taken there which ran well over one hundred barrels—one of one hundred and thirty-seven barrels, I believe, although we took none over eighty. Several of these large whales gave us trouble.

The first of these was met when we had been there about three weeks. The weather was boisterous, as it was apt to be while we were on those grounds. We raised a lone spout, very full and powerful, on the lee bow. The whale was not feeding, but was coming to windward, and we lowered three boats at once, Mr. Brown’s, Mr. Macy’s, and Captain Coffin’s. Captain Coffin was hardly in condition yet to be of the most service, but he was so eager to go that Captain Nelson let him. All three boats pulled out ahead of the whale to cut him off, and waited. When we first sighted the spout it was above three miles distant, the whale swimming in a business-like way and making five or six knots. We had plenty of time, therefore, to get into good positions, and we drifted down before the wind directly upon his course.

As he was approaching us head on, and as we were drifting without the use of sail or oars—although the men had their oars in their hands and held them in place, ready to use—there was nothing to give the whale warning of our presence, and he came on quite unalarmed. When he was a short distance away, he changed his course slightly, and it looked, for some seconds, as though he would hit the boat, head on, but Mr. Brown laid the boat around a bit, and we pulled a couple of strokes. The next moment his old head, like a cliff of black granite, weather-seamed and scarred, rose just beyond the bow oar. He spouted and pitched under like a flash; but the Prince drove one iron into him just above the fin. There was no chance for the second. The boat whirled around quickly, and we were off, with the thrashing flukes almost abeam. The next spout was thin blood.

The Prince and Mr. Brown changed places, and Mr. Brown called to us to pull him up close so that he could put in another iron. No sooner had we dropped our oars and laid hold of the line to pull, than the whale milled short around, brought his nose accurately to the stem of the boat without giving Mr. Brown a chance, and pushed us fast astern. It was a delicate job for the Prince to hold us straight with the steering oar, and not to let the boat swing around broadside, but for a boat length he did it. Mr. Brown, during that time, was pushing with all his strength on the harpoon, the sharp point against the whale’s rubber-like snout, but the barb did not enter. We heard and saw the whale’s jaw snap up twice, but of course it did not reach the boat. He spouted, sending the acrid vapor, thinly mixed with blood, over us, setting us all to choking, and almost turning me inside out. Then he withdrew a little, and lay there wallowing in the seas, snapping his jaw, and snapping his spout-hole with loud cracks. Sperm whales can snap the spout-hole, which is shaped much like the f-hole of a violin, with tremendous force. Meanwhile he was eyeing us with a malevolent eye, and no wonder.

The other boats were coming up; they were nearly there. Mr. Brown thought he saw a chance, and ordered us to pull up close. We did, and the whale still lay there wallowing. We grounded on his back, and Mr. Brown pumped his lance up and down twice. There was no time for more, for the whale went down suddenly, with a flourish of his flukes, barely missing us. He did not go deep, however, for while we were watching the line and the sea, he floated up under us, belly up, with his jaw almost at right angles with his body. There was no time to escape. That jaw came down with a quick snap, cutting the boat cleanly in two between the tub-and the after-oar, spilling the men into the sea, and getting a tubful of line entangled in his teeth. I saw him spout thick blood just as I went over, clinging to my oar.

When I had come to the surface, and had cleared the water out of my eyes, the whale was trying to get rid of that tub of whale line. I could hardly help laughing, although my situation was not one for laughter, the whale reminded me so strongly of a person who had got a mouthful of hair, or of the bristles from an old toothbrush. He seemed to feel almost the same disgust. The two other boats, coming up, were almost at his flukes, and the ship had come very near. The whale caught sight of her, and instantly made for her with a vigor unexpected in a whale that spouts thick blood. The ship was broadside on, and her sails were already aback, so that she could do nothing. The whale struck her with his head amidships. If he had been merely angry, and not hurt, that butting might very well have been a catastrophe for us. But the vigor with which he had started had ebbed rapidly away, and his butt was feeble, although I saw the upper masts quiver, and the masthead man was rattled about like a die in a box. Then he drew off and rammed again. That second attempt was more feeble yet. He could do no more than rub against the hull; and he passed under her, and floated to the surface on the other side, fin out, with no flurry, unless his feeble buttings had been his flurry.

Mr. Macy and Captain Coffin were picking us up. The tub-oarsman was found floating amid the wreckage, his arm over his oar, unconscious. He did not recover consciousness for an hour, but then seemed to be all right. He must have been hit on the head by something, nobody could guess what. They would have thought it the teeth of the whale, except that the lower jaw, which contains all the teeth, is too narrow to reach both the tub-and the after-oarsman; and Black Man’el was again severely mauled by the teeth of the whale, on the same side that was so recently healed. This time it was not his arm, but his back. On that ebony surface there were three or four bloody wipes, where the teeth had ripped it in the process of closing. Black Man’el, however, did not miss a day’s duty on account of it, taking his regular place in the boat when it was called away, although his back must have been lame and sore for days.

That whale made eighty-five barrels. As I was watching the mates cutting off the head, Peter stopped for a moment beside me.

“He’s a scarred old lad,” he said, “is n’t he, Timmie? Do you see the marks of teeth he’s carried around for many a year?”

I did see them; old scars of the teeth of some other bull, running up diagonally from his mouth. That other bull must have bitten deep, for each tooth-mark was separate, and still formed a little hollow, like the little weathered hollows in a rock, where water gathers, or the regular marks of a drill. There were other scars, too, of wounds where the teeth seemed to have ripped and torn their way viciously.

“How do they get those scars, Peter? Fighting, I suppose; but how do they fight?”

“I’ve never seen them fighting, lad. But those who have seen it tell me that they draw off from each other a little way, and go at each other full tilt. They turn on their side, like, to give their jaws play, and bite and wrench and tear. Sometimes they ’ll use their jaws like fencing foils, without drawing off; but however they do it, they must be savage at it. If they fence, they don’t wear masks.”

“Shall we see fighting whales, Peter?”

He smiled. “We may see ’most anything, lad. It’s hard to tell. I’ve never seen ’em, but perhaps my turn is due for that this voyage.”

I wished fervently that we might see it. I watched for it with new interest, and whenever we raised a pod I hoped that they might take it into their heads to fight—fight among themselves, not us. I told Peter of my hope one day.

“Bless your heart, lad,” he said, unsmiling, which was good of him, “they won’t fight. They’re in the same school. Wait until you see a schoolmaster take on a fellow of about the same size that’s trying to get his job. Then you may see it.”

I knew nothing about schoolmasters, but I was ashamed to ask, and I said nothing. We were trying-out at the time, and the air was filled with the acrid black smoke of scrap, and the deck covered with oil mixed with soot. Only the day before we had raised a pod of large whales, and I had had great hopes, for they were of a size to make a good fight if they took a notion to. But nothing seemed farther from their intention than to fight among themselves. They led us a very pretty chase—from their point of view. We were pulling hard after them from sunrise until noon. Mr. Macy had the only chance. George Hall got an iron well into one, but it twisted off near the head, and all got away.

We had scarcely got the boats on the davits when a whale rose and spouted, not a hundred yards from the ship. Mr. Baker bellowed out for a crew on the instant, and I ran to his boat, the first one there. The Prince, Peter, Kane, and the Admiral were the others. We had the boat in the water, tumbled in, and were pulling for the whale in less than a minute. The Prince struck with both irons, and the whale sounded at once, with a grand flourish of flukes. He sounded out very nearly all our line; so nearly all of it that we bent on a drug, while Mr. Baker hailed the ship for more. Mr. Tilton’s boat was already in the water, beginning to pull toward us, but we held the whale at that depth, with but two flakes of line left in the tub.

Although that whale had not nearly had his spoutings out, he stayed down over an hour. Mr. Tilton stood by, his line bent to the end of ours, but Mr. Baker would not give up the whale until he had to. When the whale rose at last, he did not come up with a rush, on a breach, or half-breach, but he floated up, and came to the surface like an old waterlogged timber, plainly exhausted. There was nothing for Mr. Baker to do but to pull up and lance him at his leisure. Within ten minutes the whale was in his flurry, and in a short time after he was fast alongside the ship. Mr. Baker estimated him at eighty barrels, but by hard work we had him cut-in and on board by dark, and the carcass cut adrift.

It was now past the middle of the season, and we put into Wellington to fill our water-casks, to give the men a run ashore, and to get our mail. There was no mail for me, but I sent home another instalment of my journal, and I saw the town, which had little interest for me. There was only one town which I cared about seeing, and that was more than a year away, almost exactly on the other side of the world. I had a great desire to see at least one of the Marquesas Islands, but Wellington is not the Marquesas.

When we got back to our cruising grounds, whales were getting scarce and wild and difficult of approach. The big whales seemed to have gone. We did get one forty-barrel bull, one of a small school that was running to leeward from another ship. We saw the ship in the distance, and we saw her boats; but the whales were running faster than the boats could go. Our one bull we intercepted, but the rest ran away from us, straight to leeward, head out. It was useless to chase them. The strange boats did not get nearer to us than a mile and a half; then they gave it up, and went back to their ship, which bore away to the southward without an attempt to speak us.

Captain Nelson must have made up his mind very suddenly to get out of those waters. As soon as the trying-out of the forty-barrel bull was finished we stood away to the northward, for the Ellices, Gilberts, and Kingsmill; but most of all, I thought, to find those mysterious grounds where the Apollo had filled up. Just after we had filled away, Peter found me, and pointed in silence to the horizon. There was a faint haze, but I made out a pair of topmasts, with yards on them.

“A brig?” I asked, with but faint interest.

“A schooner,” Peter answered. “I saw her from aloft.”

It dawned upon me then; it was the Battles, going the same way we were. I watched her draw away from us. Then I saw Captain Coffin watching, too.